Up to now, for the purpose of confirming a communication of a wide area network, a method in which monitoring frames are periodically transmitted from a port at an end point of a path, and the reception of the frames is confirmed at an opposed port has been widely used. In particular, in the Ethernet network, an Ethernet (registered trademark) OAM (operations administration maintenance, refer to IEEE 802.1ag Connectivity Fault Management (CFM)) is used.
In addition, in association with the technique of confirming the communication in the network, a technique disclosed in JP-A-2004-215026 has been known. In the technique disclosed in JP-A-2004-215026, a monitor frequency value corresponding to each importance degree is set in each device within the network. Each device is monitored on the basis of the monitoring frequency value to monitor a failure in the network.
Also, in the general information system, in many cases, a server manager monitors the operating condition of a server (refer to JP-A-2001-356972 and IETF RFC 792 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)). JP-A-2001-356972 discloses a technique in which a monitor server transmits a monitor packet to plural servers to be monitored within the network, thereby managing the operating condition of the server. IETF RFC 792 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) discloses a technique in which, particularly in an IP network, ping utilizing an internet control message protocol (ICMP) echo is used to monitor the operating condition of the server.
Also, in a large-scaled information system such as a data center, in many cases, a manager is placed at each of servers and networks. For that reason, when a failure occurs in a service which is supplied in the information system, there is a need to promptly carve up the cause of errors among those managers. As a method for carving up the failure factor, there is a method combining the above-mentioned ping and Ethernet OAM together.
In this method, each server manager and each network manager monitor the server and the network by using the ping and the Ethernet OAM, respectively. Thereafter, those monitored results are checked with each other to carve up the failure factor. More specifically, when the server manager detects the service failure by using the ping, the network manager examines a maintenance endpoint (hereinafter referred to as “MEP”) to be monitored by the Ethernet OAM of the port connected with the server. The network manager determines that the failure factor exists at the network side when a failure is detected in the result of the Ethernet OAM. Conversely, the network manager determines that the failure factor exists at the server side when no failure is detected in the result of the Ethernet OAM.